


Luke & John

by crowroad



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Books, Cages, Christmas, Christmas Presents, Flashbacks, Holidays, John's Journal, Magic, Mary-Centric, Necessarily, Not Canon Compliant, Paganism, Prison, Season/Series 12, Spoilers, Visions, Witchcraft, Young Dean Winchester, Young Sam Winchester
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-25
Updated: 2016-12-25
Packaged: 2018-09-11 23:30:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,083
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9042059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crowroad/pseuds/crowroad
Summary: You're not a hunter unless you've spent the eve of Christmas alone in a motel room with three books: the King James of course, and an old-school phonebook, and an instruction manual, leather, dun with palm-salt and age.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LaughableLament](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LaughableLament/gifts).
  * Inspired by [In the Bones](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8530993) by [LaughableLament](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LaughableLament/pseuds/LaughableLament). 



> Sgàthan: Scottish Gaelic, mirror
> 
> Merry & happy to [laughablelament](http://archiveofourown.org/users/LaughableLament/pseuds/LaughableLament) ! Thank you for all the conversation(s), and so much more.

 

You're not a hunter unless you've spent the eve of Christmas alone in a motel room with three books: the King James of course, and an old-school phonebook, and an instruction manual, leather, dun with palm-salt and age. Or no—not a manual but a map. Your past, and a how-to, and a where-to. Or no, not your past, not yours at all but your lover's, your husband's, the man you only know in heaven, didn’t know when this was written, when his hand landed heavy on these leaves and the children you thought you'd raise together slept, tangled, across a room like this one, only lonelier.

(Or slept, some miles down the highway, in a fortress shielded by Aquarian star, where angels have tread, for real, and brought tidings. Not joy.)

*****

Sit at the scratched table and knock at the lamp with the weak bulb. Rub your eye.

Wonder how they are, your boys, if they’d welcome you, really, post-wandering, holiday or no. Sip at the convenience-mart (seasonal!) eggnog- joe you tried, hated hours ago, still do now, cold. Wipe your eyes on a checked sleeve, red-and-black.

Read: _And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field,_

Read: _keeping watch over their flock by night… And they were sore afraid._

There's a knock at the door.

*****

What are you, the witch of Christmas present, you say, because you're not a hunter-daughter-of-hunters if you don’t know a witch when you see one. Plus, the hair, tinsel-trimmed foxfire.

Ah, no, she says, watches you watch her, gird yourself, but I _have_ come to give you a present.

Your hackles. Your gun. Your--what they used to call feminine intuition, but is something else, not gendered at all.

Who are you, you say, and she pushes you inward with a whiff of snow on the prairie air, and a breath of something older, moldier, hold-carried across the sea and schoonered to this landlock; free at last.

Her hands lift and you swear there are sparkles, glitter from schoolchild fingers, fallen to the carpet, cascaded back up.

(Your eldest, four, pasting stars to a blank page. You in the kitchen with store-bought gingerbread, soldiers and seraphim.)

I've had my Christmas dreams too, the witch says, where, well, never mind that—but there were antlers and pajamas and well...my son.

Your son? 

He’s a piece of work, the witch says, but I say that one mother of sons to another. And you would know.

You know my sons, you say, but of course she does.

Are you going to tell me who you are, you say, but she pushes you down in the chair, puts your palms to the books on the table, presses them flat open as fields.

Don’t—you say, but you can’t move, and you see it then, the glamour on her, the glimmer that says _astral_ , that says not long and she’s gone. You brace yourself. The witch twirls tinsel, lets it slink to your lap.

Don't tell me you've never book-scried, witch-savvy hunter like you, she says. I know you consult psychics; it’s on your breath.

No, you say, I prefer--

Yes, you like the slower magics, the witch says, the dialup, the analog, the bones and the stones and the legwork. I can respect that. But this—

_Sgàthan_ , she says,

and some more words you can’t make out, or never heard before, and she waves over the books on the table, laid open flat and shining like mirrors, like lakes.

Don’t you--

Keep your head, girl, the witch says, sets a cold palm to your shoulder, I'll not erase anything, you just have to—

She points, a slow shining hand.

You look into the pages.

*****

You see a mirror, a lake, a hot prairie pyre.

_Your boys in a cage, their--_

_no, your boys in a bed, small, their sleeping heads, a couch,_

_a cheap Christmas tree, nog and motor oil, black-and-white set snored in front of--_

_your boys in a cage, or no, two separate ones--_

_and every gift they've given each other and some they haven't._

_Or you don’t know have they, these tangled hands, now that they’re grown,_

_reaching for each other through bars._

You start up, blink the lake away.

Is this now—, you say. You’re trembling as you haven’t in awhile; your engine-stutter heart.

Ah, the witch says, you know time doesn’t run straight in these things, more like...ley lines, or these sad Kansas backroads.

You do know. You do. You can’t move.

Is this what you came to give me, you say, bitter, my sons and their lonely holidays and their prisons?

No, the witch says, and releases you, and your hands warm and your eyes fill and you pull away.

I came to give you what you most want, the witch says.

And what do I most want? You’re sure you don’t know, but you do.

A story, the witch says, your own. You know, we mothers have to stick to--well, you get the point. 

Are my boys in trouble, you say.

She smiles then, emerald eyeshade straight out of the seventies.

Virgin birth, she sniffs, I’ll take the holly and the oak any day thank you, but Merry Christmas, Mary Winchester.

Your hands come down flat on the table, on the pages of a blank book.

What’s your name, you say.

She’s gone.

*****

Four books: Bible, journal, old-school phonebook--and a new one blank and clean where you will make your own--

(not map, no, you're no geomancer, said the witch, not palimpsest, vengeance over vengeance rubbed-out, not

notes or apology or poetry or memory. Your own. History that is, or hers.) 

Put two of them in your pockets. Pour the dregs out and pull on your coat.

Think about John smiling, snow tumbled to his shoulders, greased palms and sack full of joys and your eldest, a boy named for a valley, a chieftain, for home and love and law, gone wild with holiday. In your belly the son named for the ear of God.

Get yourself out to your car, as you got in that car that all those times ago, all those years ago before there was heaven; think about a star-hung desert where another with your name and without, if you believe any of it, your violence, your blood, but still a destiny, found hay and a cradle and time, and drive, fast along the lonely highway, to where your sons are sleeping.


End file.
